Royce Larson: Strict penalties will fix Highway 174

Regarding the editorial board's recent review on Highway 174, your "truths" did not include the one more basic truth about traffic deaths: Prevention of death and injury can be accomplished by a society-wide serious enforcement of rules of the road.

Our society needs to say that if you speed on the road, you go to jail and lose your license for, say, 10 years. Our society needs to say that if you drive drunk on anything, you go to jail for a long time and you lose your license for ever, period.

This societal solution must include no options for lesser actions by the legal system. So now we really need some leaders who can lead our society via the legislative process to enact these badly needed and ultimately fair rules.

With these serious and actually enforced rules, Caltrans would need to do essentially nothing to Highway 174 and similar situations and the danger to those who use the roads would be greatly reduced.